Abstract
For Nicholas Holm, contemporary comedy takes traditional forms of humour, joke types and character types and subverts them or uses them in a reflective manner. For him, such comedy has not only changed the way we laugh but also how we relate to and engage with the world around us. His book is concerned with the political consequences of this and with comedy as a key site of cultural politics. In particular, it focuses on what Holm calls the political aesthetics of popular humour and comedy, looking at the political work performed by the aesthetic features of comic forms. Sceptical of claims that humour is liberatory and operates as a vehicle of dissent, Holm challenges celebratory accounts of humour that overstate its critical function and underplay its narrative force. He then goes on to investigate three key modes of contemporary humour: discomfort, provocation and absurdity. Each of the chapters dealing with these three modes is discussed through particular examples – The Office, for example, illustrates discomfort, while The Simpsons illustrates absurdity. Out of all this, Holm develops a political aesthetic theory of contemporary comedy whereby humour acts to undermine the taken-for-granted codes and conventions of the social and political order. The book is both bold and coherent in its argumentation and analysis. Whether its adumbration of political aesthetic theory will gain critical traction in humour and comedy studies remains to be seen, but it certainly strikes out in a new direction and discussion of contemporary forms of and trends within popular comedy will inevitably have to take it into account.